It's another double installment, the last for a while one hopes, of stuff that happened and what we gleaned from it.
MARCH 31: It's disclosed that Arthur Palomino, one of the children in Mendez, et al v. Westminster, et al,, Orange County's most famous civil rights case, passed away. What We Learned: The sound of media silence.
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APRIL 1: Research UC Irvine scientists participated in is published that identifies the gene that makes some people nice and others assholes. What We Learned: The gene sequence for that prick who cut us off on I-5.
APRIL 2: A man leaps to his death from the Disney Resort's main parking structure. Anaheim Police investigate the death of Christopher Tran, 23, of Santa Ana, as a suicide. What We Learned: It's a world of tears.
APRIL 3: A spiritual cleanser massages a woman with raw eggs inside a Santa Ana motel to unleash negative energy before the therapy turns into rape, oral copulation and physical assault, according to authorities. Alberto Flores Ramirez now face 12 years in prison. What We Learned: What came first, the chicken or the lay?
APRIL 4: Joe Abell, assistant principal of Fullerton Union High School, apologizes to Kearian Giertz for pulling the student out of the Mr. Fullerton pageant the night before because the senior answered he supports gay marriage. What We Learned: Joe Abell probably isn't a fan of Glee.
APRIL 5: Dominic John Witter, a 25-year-old teacher and coach at private Crean Lutheran High School in Irvine, is arrested after arriving at a Laguna Hills pizza parlor where he thought a female student would be waiting for him, according to authorities. Witter is accused of sending the girl sexually explicit texts and photos and asking her to return the favor. What We Learned: It ain't easy being Crean.
APRIL 6: The Albert Pujols era begins for the Anaheim Angels of Los Angeles. The Halos beat the Royals 5-0. What We Learned: To start picking out those World Series seats.
APRIL 7: A fund-raiser is held for Adeela, a short film in pre-production that was inspired by Islamophobia gone wild displayed last year by Villa Park City Councilwoman and OC Republican Party vice chairwoman Deborah Pauly and other politicians. What We Learned: Casting choices for Pauly include Glenn Close (think Fatal Attraction), the late Margaret Hamilton (think the Wizard of Oz wicked witch) and John Lithgow (a dead ringer for Pauly in The World According to Garp).
APRIL 8: Besides food, music and dancing, more than 30,000 people at Irvine's annual Persian New Year festivities are “treated” to an annoying Christian who is trying to convert Muslim. George Saieg of Anaheim-based Ministry to Muslim Network pulls this divisive act at similar festivals from Irvine to Dearborn, Michigan. What We Learned: A romantic interest for the Adeela character based on Deb Pauly.
APRIL 9: Rep. Loretta Sanchez (R-Garden Grove) scoffs at a California High Speed Rail Authority decision to exclude as a stop Anaheim, which is within her district. “Failure
to link the high speed rail system to Orange County negatively impacts
the county's residents and our local economy, and is a disappointment
for the state of California,” she says in a press statement. What We Learned: At least there will be one fewer train for Santa Ana City Councilwoman Michele Martinez to say something stupid on.
APRIL 10: Someone tries to set a homeless man on fire in Anaheim. It happens after midnight when a passerby wakes the gent sleeping on a bus bench that someone purposely torched. What We Learned: OC homeless men who survived a serial slasher have someone else to worry about.
APRIL 11: An apparently intoxicated, masked man with snot on his sweatshirt and
holding a revolver walks into a Costa Mesa bar early in the morning and
demands cash. But Ryan Matthew Stimbert, 37, of Irvine, leaves Avalon Bar without remembering to take the money and is picked up, according to police, after being caught firing the gun at a building. Turns out he'd been tossed from a second bar earlier the same night. What We Learned: People have made themselves bigger asses than me at Costa Mesa bars.
APRIL 12: Leo James Zabala Jr. of Whittier changes his plea to guilty in Santa Ana federal court to using Yahoo email and craigslist online personals to offer high school girls “$60 for intercourse” and “$40 for oral copulation.” In exchange for the plea, the 26-year-old gets 91 months in federal prison, no right to appeal, three
years supervised probation once he's released, forfeiture of all Internet usernames and passwords, an order to pay $32 a month for a computer
monitoring program, registration as a sex offender, participation in
outpatient psychological counseling, prohibition from going within 100 feet of a
school, park, public swimming pool, playground or video arcade, or from communicating with any person under the age of 18 without the
permission of the parents after they've been informed of his
convictions. What We Learned: Lowballing for sex never works.
APRIL 13: A Long Beach Superior Court judge tosses the convictions of Joe Byron and Joe Grumbine, who had operated medical marijuana dispensaries in Garden Grove and Long Beach, and orders a new–and hopefully fair–trial. The presiding judge in the pair's first trial had dimissed himself from the case for sending a congratulatory letter
to the prosecutor. What We Learned: Judicial bias is not confined to Orange County.
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.